Annotations From the Archives: Christmas in Red Cloud
In Webster County during Willa Cather’s childhood, Christmas traditions differed from our modern representations of Victorian Christmas celebrations and decorations. While the Panic of 1893 happened during Cather’s college years, the economy on the frontier was always volatile due to the vagaries of weather and farming. As a result, celebrations were modest for many of the county’s citizens.
While Cather was a child, many holiday celebrations were community-focused. The county’s newspapers were filled with holiday activities. For example, many churches and several schools held Christmas programs that featured songs and recitations by the children. The Webster County Argus reported that the 1890 Harmony Sunday School Christmas Eve celebration featured both orations and good music, followed by “jolly old Santa Claus with his apples, nuts and candies, which were soon scattered all over the house.” Rather than a Christmas tree, their celebration featured a “Christmas arch,” a homemade greenery arrangement that was a Christmas tree substitute. (Plans for such arches were printed in many issues of the newspapers, along with ideas for decorating them with bells, Christmas cards, toys, and fruit.)
In Red Cloud and Guide Rock, clubs and organizations had their own Christmas trees, visits from Santa Claus, and benefits. The Grand Army of the Republic, for example, had their own Christmas tree and celebration; Webster County’s Women’s Relief Corps, which provided assistance for disabled Civil War veterans and the poorer residents of Red Cloud, held an annual supper and dance on Christmas night. The Red Cloud volunteer fire department also gave a masquerade ball.
Christmas trees, of course, were popularized during Queen Victoria’s reign and slowly swept the United States. Christmas trees were being harvested in New England and shipped near and far in the 1870s and 1880s, with sturdy spruce and fir trees selling for as much as $1-$5 in New York City. Here in Webster County, though, most Christmas trees were native Eastern Red Cedar, harvested by a nearby farmer, and shared at community events. Nearby Bladen, Cowles, and Inavale all had community trees for the children, as did rural areas like Penny Creek, Pleasant Prairie, and Elm Creek. At those celebrations, adults were encouraged to bring small presents to put on the tree for their friends and families. Advertisements in the local papers suggested gifts of knives, gloves, Christmas toys, mufflers, handkerchiefs, pens, whistles, books, and more. Santa Claus distributed the presents to everyone, as well as bringing his own supply of nuts, fruit, and candy for the crowd. Many gifts were practical, and many were small because rather than being stacked under the tree, they were often tied onto the tree's branches!
We know that Willa Cather enjoyed Christmas and thought often of her friends and family back in Nebraska during the holidays. Our archives hold a large collection of Christmas cards that she sent to her loved ones. (We have featured reproductions of these as part of an ongoing series in our bookstore. Several are still available!) Though she sent a different card almost every year, the common thread connecting them is that the beautiful artwork in some way reminded Willa Cather of the recipient.
Still, the holidays can be a somber time, and for Willa Cather, far from her home and many of the people she loved, Christmas was a time for both celebration and reflection. When she was in college, writing for the Nebraska State Journal, she wrote:
It is not a very great while till Christmas now. One begins to feel the restlessness and secrecy in the air, and to smell the cedar and see the holly gleaming in the windows. Almost every one I meet has a bundle and is hurrying home to hide it. The toy shops are filled with people buying things for the children they love. It seems to me that I too must be buying and hiding away something for a child I used to love and I wonder what it shall be. It has been a long time since I have seen her, and I do not even know if they keep Christmas in her country, but I must send her something because I am lonely and think of her, . . . No matter what it is, she will like it, for she is not like other children. They will grow old and forget and cease to love, but her childhood is eternal. (December 17, 1893)
Later, this memory would fuel the ending for the story "Jack-a-Boy," published in Saturday Evening Post in March 1901. "Jack-a-Boy" was loosely based on Cather's youngest brother, Jack, and she mentions in a letter that he was terribly ill in 1893. He recovered, but many children that year fell ill to diphtheria and other diseases.
Christmas time came, when every one was buying presents for the little children they loved, but we bought no presents in Windsor Terrace, and we did not even know whether they kept Christmas in Jack-a-Boy's country.
As she reminisced about home at holiday time, Cather found that she could do a few things to ease the hardships of a life in the country for many old friends. The Lambrechts, who were neighbors when the Charles Cather family lived on the farm, and Anna Sadilek Pavelka, now raising a large family on their farmstead near Bladen, were often singled out as recipients of Willa Cather's Christmas giving. In this letter, Cather asks her friend Carrie Miner Sherwood, to make the arrangements needed to provide Christmas cheer to these families. Just as in the days of old, the gifts she selects are simple, practical, and personal—just what you might expect from a highly observant and kind friend of long years.
Happy holidays from all of us in Red Cloud!